CHICAGO (CBS) — The family of a man who was shot and killed by police in Elk Grove Village last year filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
On December 1, 2023, police responded to Jack Murray’s home in the 200 block of Fern Drive in Elk Grove Village in response to a 911 call about a person “acting erratically with a knife.”
Murray’s family has said they believe he was the one who called, and that he was slurring his words and in distress at the time.
“We as a family never expected that Jack’s cry for help would lead to a fatal shooting and the loss of our 24-year-old son,” said his mother, Donna Murphy. “The same people we expected to help took the life of a beautiful human being.”
“A call for help from someone suffering from a mental or physical crisis should never be a death sentence,” said Murray family attorney Tony Romanucci.
The family’s attorneys said officers shot Murray within 90 seconds of arriving on the scene, when he approached police with a knife in his hand, after failing to use proper de-escalation tactics to get Murray help give him what he needed.
“Jack was extremely disoriented, in emotional distress, stumbling and slurring his speech. He was incapable of hurting anyone,” Romanucci said.
Murray’s mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit Wednesday against the village and the unnamed officers involved in the shooting. The family’s attorneys say the village has not yet identified the officers involved.
The Murray family’s attorneys said officers responded to the 911 call knew that Murray had a history of emotional sufferingand had undergone crisis intervention training but did not use de-escalation tactics before shooting him.
But despite their resources, their knowledge, and their supposed preparation, these officers failed to complete their training, failed to use any de-escalation tactics, and failed to provide Jack with the time, physical space, and ultimately the desperate help he needed . had called the police,” Romanucci said. “Recognition of diminished impairment by Elk Grove Village Police required crisis intervention, not a full military-style police response that Jack received instead.”
Elk Grove Village officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, but after releasing body camera footage of the incident in December, Mayor Craig Johnson emphasized that crisis intervention, mental health counseling and de-escalation training tactics were used during the incident. .
“Unfortunately, these efforts were not effective in neutralizing the threat to officer safety,” Johnson said at the time.
Body camera footage and dispatch footage released in December revealed that officers were aware of Murray’s history of mental health problems.
Knowing that a caller had told police that Murray was wielding a knife before they arrived, an officer urged dispatchers to tell other people to leave the house and later expressed reluctance to approach the house until the other people were able to escape inside.
Moments later, body camera footage shows Murray approaching officers with a knife in his hand as police repeatedly tell him to raise his hands.
“He’s going to get tased,” an officer said as Murray approached them.
Footage from a second officer’s body camera shows a woman in the background asking Murray to put down his knife as he walks toward police.
Police and Johnson have said officers twice deployed a Taser on Murray as he approached them, and the sound of a Taser can be heard on the video as officers repeatedly tell Murray to drop the knife.
Within seconds of the officers deploying a Taser, one of the officers can be seen firing several shots from his service pistol. Murray was later pronounced dead at an area hospital.
The Murray family’s legal team noted that the video footage showed that officers at the scene were equipped with at least one rifle loaded with non-lethal “bean bags” that could have been used to subdue Murray, but police did not use them that option.
The shooting is being investigated by the Suburban Major Case Assistance Team. Johnson has said the investigation could take months.
